Mixed Media Master

David Hockney is one of the most celebrated painters of our time, but he has not shied away from using technology-based media for his art. An extensive exhibit of his photographic works, including highly praised collages that play with perspective and point of view, is at the Museum of Contemporary Art (https://www.moca.org) until Oct. 21. He also has used a color copier to create some of his works.

Born in England, Hockney, 63, lives in Los Angeles.

Computer

I personally don’t use a computer too much. I have them here and my assistant uses them. But in art, you always need a pair of scissors and pot of glue. You need the hand. You need low tech.

I have just done a new book [“Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters,” due out later this month] that is about how technology influenced art. I had to examine 600 years of history--we used a color printer to reproduce pictures from books. We put them up on a wall that was 70 feet long so I could scan it.

Question: With what kind of scanner?

Answer: Just my eyes. I could look at something from the 15th century, and then my eye would catch something from the 18th century and I could see the relationship. If we had put it into the computer, the edges would have been too small.

Q. You have used technology in creating your own works.

A. I once did something that appeared in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner--I made four black pictures and told them what colors to print them in. The only time it existed as a finished work was when it was printed. I was playing with that.

I can see the benefits of technology, but there are limits. For 400 years before photography, painters used optical projections to view things. Photography was simply the invention of chemicals to freeze the optical image.

It took the hand out of it to a certain extent. Now, with the technology of Photoshop [photography manipulation software], the hand is back in. If you want to squeeze an image, take something out of it, put something in, you can do that. It means, in a way, that you are drawing on the photograph.

You can’t have a Cartier-Bresson again. [Henri Cartier-Bresson, born in 1908, is best known for his documentary photography.] He came in with the invention of the small camera, 35 millimeter, and faster film so that you didn’t need a tripod. He could walk the streets with his camera, and in that period he was the great master. He made hundreds of stunning images.

When I first met him in 1975, I wanted to talk about photography. He wanted to talk about drawing. It later dawned on me that 1975 was about the time the computer began to be used to work on photographs. Whether or not Cartier-Bresson knew it at the time, his period was over. There was no need to believe things in photographs anymore. Maybe he sensed that.

Q. If photography can’t be trusted to reflect the real world, what media can?

A. I don’t know. But it is having an effect. A friend at Otis [College of Art and Design] told me the young now want drawing classes. I can understand that. If you are manipulating an image, you have to know about spatial relationships. You can be taught that. No one can teach you to be a draftsman like Picasso or Matisse, but you can learn to be competent.

Q. Are you going to be doing some work with Photoshop?

A. Right now I’m painting. I’ve always been interested in other things and many forms of printing, but I also always point out that with paint you can get color like nothing else, and it lasts. If something is put on a disc, we don’t really know how long it will last.

E-Mail

No, because I can’t type. I write things out by hand and send faxes, partly because I can write perfectly well at the speed I think. And I write only when I’m ready with what I’m going to say.

Q. What kind of pen do you use?

A. I have thousands of pens. When I’m writing a letter or something serious, I usually use one of the Rollerballs.

Cell Phone

I don’t go out that much because of my deafness. If there are more than six people in a room, the noise is so great I can’t make sense of it. I don’t even go to the opera like I used to.

It’s not too bad. It runs in my family, and I am not going to just sit around moaning about it. It is true that I do love music, but if you like music, you usually like silence. I read a lot and I’m very busy. I get people to come here or go out where I know there are small groups.

One thing I realize now is that the restaurant noise is unbearable. I never go; it’s a cacophony for me. I don’t know how people manage it. I assume it’s because people want to be with each other but have nothing to say.

Q. Has technology made improvements in hearing aids that you find beneficial?

A. Technology can do more for the eyes than the ears. I got some new hearing aids--they are OK but not that much better.

I have a friend who got a new hearing aid that cost $5,000. I asked him, “What kind is it?” and he said, “10:30.”

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As told to David Colker